Gary Neville refuses to apologise for ‘awful’ claim about Spurs ambition

Gary Neville has ripped into Tottenham following their defeat against Arsenal, labelling their performance on Saturday as “awful”.

There was optimism from a Spurs point of a view heading into the North London Derby, with Antonio Conte’s men unbeaten in the Premier League in their first seven matches.

The game took up the expected pattern, with the Gunners being on the front-foot and dominating possession, while Spurs looked dangerous when they played through Arsenal’s block.

The match was finely poised a 1-1 at half-time but it was the home side who turned the screws at the start of the second half and retook the lead when Hugo Lloris parried Bukayo Saka’s effort onto Gabriel Jesus’ path.

Tottenham’s attempts to muster a response were ended just after the hour mark after Emerson Royal was shown a straight red for a dangerous challenge on Gabriel Martinelli.

Granit Xhaka then put the icing on the cake for Mikel Arteta’s men with a third goal just minutes later.

Neville insisted that the Lilywhites should have shown more ambition at the Emirates.

The pundit said on the Gary Neville Podcast: “Yesterday I thought Spurs were awful. I don’t think we should apologise for saying that. I thought their ambition was poor, I thought that they played too deep.”

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I, like many Spurs fans, do want us to be a little braver in possession but I felt Conte’s game plan worked quite well until the red card.

Despite Arsenal’s dominance, possession-wise, we did not concede too many clear-cut chances, and it took a fine effort from Thomas Partey for them to take the lead.

The one criticism that you can level at Conte is that given the way he sets the team up, things have to work perfectly for us to get results in these big matches, which it clearly did not on Saturday.

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